Austin Ard Boyz Regional Tournament

The Fly Lords had quite an exciting time at the regional ard boyz tournament this last weekend. We finished in 3 of the top 4 slots and are looking forward to Baltimore. Despite some rather lose interpretation of the rules and strange missions, I think we all had a good time. Mkerr took a big bugs army, Aventine had mech Eldar, and I had Speed Freaks.

The first mission was called The Golden Ticket. There was an objective placed in the center of the board (the ticket). Deployment zones were 12” in on the long board edge. The objective was to grab the ticket and hold it at the end of the game so you can get into Wonka’s Chocolate Factory (their words, not mine). As for strange rules, vehicles could not touch the ticket (impassable for them) and all units were fearless.
I played this first one against a great Witch Hunters player. We both placed long range units off to the side and out fast units near the center. He infiltrated 3 death cults and a Eversor. Fortunately for me, my fighta-bomba raid took out half of two allied guard platoons and the Eversor. I think this stunned my opponent and he never really recovered. A luck basilisk shell wiped out his seraphim and it was all down hill from there. At the end fo the game he has an Inquisitor with servitors intact and a immobile, weapon destroyed exorcist. Result was a 20 point massacre, and I got all 4 bonus points.

The second mission was probably the most bizarre of them all. Mkerr had also scored 24 points in the previous mission, so we faced each other on this one. The fluff was that we join a battle already in progress. There were no deployment zones, and units could be placed in any order. The only restriction is that they could not be placed closer to 6” from each other. I know, a CC army’s dream. But to make up for it, there was no assault phase the entire first round. Also, it used the night fighting rules on round one and table quarters. I won the dice roll to go first and got ready to unleash on Mkerr’s bugs. Scorcha buggies drove in behind stealers, powerclaws got lined up on carnifexes, zzap guns and rockets got lined up on tyrant guard. It was looking good. For some reason, the scorcha only dropped 2 stealers. The zzaps and rockets did put some wounds on the big bugs. Then I made my fatal mistake. I forgot there was no assaulting on turn 1. I clumped 40 ard boys mere inches from 4 big bugs, ready for assault. Now they had to stand still as 4 pie plates dropped on them in mkerr’s shooting phase. Time went by much to fast and we only got in 2 turns of play. At the end, I killed more of his bugs, but he managed to get some of my boys units below half and claim a quadrant. Result was a minor loss for me.

The last mission was much more normal. A basic cleanse mission with diagonal deployment zones and escalation. I was playing the winner of one of the local tournaments, so I was expecting a hard mission. I wont get too much into this battle, but there were quite a bit of questionable rule interpretations and misinterpretations by my opponent. The end result was a minor victory.

At the end of the day it was a 3 way tie for first place with mkerr 1 point behind. No single player dominated and everyone had at least 1 loss. Because the organizer didn’t have us count up victory points, there was no way to break the tie. We decided, typical warhammer fashion, to roll dice for the winning spot and the 3000 point army grand prize. We each got a hand full (6) dice and rolled. I managed to out roll the other two and was declared the winner. Honestly, the whole thing was more about luck than anything else. If we had had slightly different missions, or different opponents, everything would have turned out different.

So, now I am packing my bags for Baltimore. Expect some “on the scene” reporting from there.